Dear Susan,
Every time I try and set a limit with my children around how much screen time they get, they complain about how bored they are. And because they pester me to no end, I wind up either giving in, or getting into an argument with them. Please help.
Tired of Fighting
You put words to an experience that many parents are having. While kids being bored is nothing new, how the screens factor in, is. The screen technologies are changing the very nature of how boredom is viewed and experienced. Perhaps most alarming of all is what is being lost for our children without the gifts and capacities that boredom brings. This is not easy to see as the screens are such an exquisite fill in, often blinding us as parents about what is going missing from our children’s childhood.
Many of us have come to associate being bored as the equivalent of a four-letter word: something worthy of our disapproval and outrage, and something that many parents work very hard to make sure their children never experience. We have come to equate boredom with so many of the wrong things. We worry it means that we are not doing enough. We fear that our children will be left behind if they are not constantly being externally engaged at all moments, and from the earliest of ages. Trying to ensure that your children are never bored is an enormous mistake to make.
I hear from too many college students, far too often, of the hours they waste each and every day in front of a screen simply because they do not know what to do with themselves. They do not know how to be when there is nothing entertaining, structuring, and stimulating them. They do not know how to be alone and see that as an opportunity. They do not recognize that the lack of time they experience in their days to get their work done, play, hang out with friends, cook food, get the sleep they need, or pursue interests and activities they love, is inextricably and undeniably bound to exorbitant amounts of screen use. Not only indiscriminately eating up all of their time, but also leaving them without the ability to be at home in themselves, or to live and create from what is inside of them.
Pause for a moment, and imagine what that means for your children if they cannot be at ease without a lot of stimulation. How do you imagine that might impact their lives? How they feel about themselves? What they get themselves into? In truth, one of the best gifts you can give to your children is the space to be bored. Do not allow every ounce of their time to be filled. Do not let them stuff their days full of screen preoccupations and obsessions. To grow soundly into adulthood, children must know boredom. Regularly. It is the yellow brick road to creativity, perseverance, self-initiative, and so much more.
What this requires though in our “you-never-have-to-be-bored technological times” is a gatekeeper. That’s you. Someone who can see the value in leaving enough open space in the schedule so that boredom, along with many other beneficial experiences, can arise. Your children need you to take a strong lead on this one. They cannot do it for themselves. The pull of screen entertainment is far too strong for them to handle this on their own. It is you who must hold the position that screen time often reduces down to lifeless fun, orchestrated and unimaginative creativity, excessive stimulation and addictive-generating behavior, along with pseudo play time with friends. Even if they cannot see it. It is up to you to see where time in front of a screen is robbing them of what truly makes for a creative and playful childhood, remembering that this all goes on to serve as the foundation for what they will need later in life.
What this looks like is getting clear within yourself about the value of boredom in childhood. Do you have any favorite memories of what came out of your own boredom when you were growing up? Do you remember the long days of summer or a vacation stretching out before you with very little to do? Can you remember a time when everything was so wide open that you could create out of the thin air of your own imagination? Let that be your guide with your children. Let that serve as a reminder that boredom is not to be avoided; it is to be embraced. And then hold the line. Make a decision to take the screens out of the equation at times, and then let your kids figure it out. Initially, it will be trying, but if you stick with it, they will settle in, and I guarantee you, something amazing will come out of it.
When we can find our way back to what boredom and open space offered us as children, we lean into something that helps us to know what our children most need now. This is so important as this kind of knowledge is being lost. We are forgetting what children really need, or somehow believing that it has all changed just because the technologies are here now. Nothing about what it means to be human has changed. Nothing except the stories we are generating now that have nothing to do with the real needs of a developing human being. The essentials of childhood remain as they have always been, with boredom being a natural, necessary and desirable part of growing up.